Microsoft Unveils Vision and Roadmap

At its annual SOA & Business Process Conference last month (Oct. 29-31)
Microsoft laid out from soup to nuts its vision for simplifying the process
of designing, building deploying and managing composite applications across
organizations. What appears to be at the heart of this vision is a serious commitment
by Redmond to model-driven programming.

While Microsoft has been talking about and dabbling in model-driven programming,
it's clearly deepening its commitment this time around. The re-doubled effort
is part of a multi-year, multi-product effort called "Oslo," the code
name for a set of technical investments that will help IT shops crystallize
this vision.

Microsoft officials see the technical innovations part of Oslo furthering its
Software plus Services (S+S) strategy by supplying extensions to the application
platform to help developers bridge on-premise and off-premise projects. The
company plans to make new tools available to help IT shops take advantage of
"real-world SOA" opportunities as they exist today.

"One of the big bets we're making with Oslo is around model-driven development.
I think it will be the anchor for a new generation of application development.
It will take model-driven development techniques and take them mainstream. We
think it will help quicken IT's clock speed so it can keep up with the pace
of its business organization," says Burley Kawasaki, director of Microsoft's
connected systems division.